By RAYMOND HILLEGAS

rhillegas@dailynews.net

It's a Friday, and Warren Wittman is making quarter-pounders, one-third pounders and half pounders. On this day, he'll go through about 500 pounds of beef.

"Usually every Friday, we spend about two-thirds of the day just making hamburger patties," Wittman said. "Everybody wants hamburger patties this time of year."

Along with his steaks, brats and beefsticks, all of which are homemade and popular during the summertime, according to Wittman.

"It's all made here in Hays, America," Wittman said.

Throughout Warren's Meat Market, 1010 E. 29th, the sound of a buzzer is heard as another customer steps through the door and is greeted by Wittman or his wife, Arlene, who has worked with her husband since he opened the store in September 2002. She does the packaging and the wrapping while he processes the large sections of beef into smaller cuts.

It's work Wittman knows well.

He's been doing it since he was 17 years old.

"Back then, everybody butchered their own beef, and that's where I got the hang of it," Wittman said of his experiences growing up on a farm south of Victoria.

Those experiences and an opportunity for a job at a packing house where his brother worked in Hays led to a career in the meat market business. Before he ever opened his own market, though, Wittman worked for a number of years at meat markets around the area, as well as a steak plant and a grocery store where he made sausage.

But, Wittman admitted, "There's nothing like working for yourself."

"That way you can put all the eggs in one basket, and you don't have to share it with anybody."

Except for his wife, Arlene, "she's on the clock, too," he says with a smile.

In at 6:30 a.m., Wittman is ready for customers by 9 when the store opens. He stays busy throughout the day taking orders over the phone, helping customers who come in to shop and keeping the coolers stocked with a variety of meats he cuts and prepares for customers after it comes in from wholesalers in Wichita and Nebraska.

His specialties include homemade sausage and smoked meats.

"About 12 months out of the year, I go through a lot of sausage," Wittman said.

He makes about eight different kinds of fresh sausage, including German country style, German garlic, bratwurst, liver sausage and breakfast sausage, all of which can be found in the coolers among the smoked meats.

"I smoke bacon, hams, pork chops, chicken, turkey, boneless hams, sausage, beef sticks and jerky. It all gets smoked," Wittman said. "There's probably 20 items or so all together."

Many of his customers are regulars from Hays and the surrounding towns, and quite a few of them are out-of-towners.

"A lot of travelers that come through see my sign, and they'll turn around and come in, or they'll go through The Mall and shop, then leave The Mall and see the sign and they'll come in and see what's going on," Wittman said.

Some even have moved away from Hays, but they'll call in to make an order that a loved one who still lives here or who is coming through can stop in to pick up. All orders have to be picked up, because he doesn't ship orders and never has.

On top of staying busy with orders, serving the customers who make their way to the store and keeping the coolers stocked, Wittman hopes to do some deer processing this winter in a shed he's redoing behind the store. That is if he can find someone to help him process the deer, as far as breaking it down and doing the butchering, making it easier for Wittman to work with the meat.

He's a busy man, and that's no understatement -- but at least he's not bored.

"Somebody once said, 'Doesn't your life ever get boring doing the same thing all the time?' Well, I really don't do the same thing all the time," he said. "I work with meat. That's my occupation. But I never get bored just cutting meat all day because I'm always doing something different. Either I'm making patties, or sausage, or getting ready to put stuff in the smoker. So, every day is always something different."

For Wittman and most of his customers, it's the homemade aspect of the market and its meats that bring them back time and time again.

"It's good quality stuff that I use," he said. "Mine's all pretty well downright traditional."